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Confectionery In The English Renaissance
Confections of the English Renaissance span a wide range of products. All were heavily based on sugar, which was a relatively new development. Many were considered to have medicinal properties – a belief that was influenced by the Arabic use of sugar as a medicine and that carried over from medieval sugar usage. In the mid-sixteenth century, sugar became cheaper and more widely available to the general populace due to European colonization of the New World. It began to be used more as a flavouring, preservative, and sweetener, as it is today, rather than as medicine. Origins Before the Renaissance era, confections typically consisted of exotic imports from the Mediterranean and the Middle East such as almonds, citrus fruits, rosewater, spices, and sometimes, sugar. The exclusivity and high cost of ingredients made confectionery a respected trade. While sugarcane had been known in Europe since Roman times, it had previously been dismissed in favor of honey as a sweetener. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banquets
A banquet (; ) is a formal large meal where a number of people consume food together. Banquets are traditionally held to enhance the prestige of a host, or reinforce social bonds among joint contributors. Modern examples of these purposes include a charitable gathering, a ceremony, or a celebration. They often involve speeches in honor of the topic or guest of honour. The older English term for a lavish meal was a feast, and "banquet" originally meant a specific and different kind of meal, often following a feast, but in a different room or even building, which concentrated on sweet foods of various kinds. These became highly fashionable as sugar became much more common in Europe at the start of the 16th century. It was a grand form of the dessert course, and special banqueting houses, often on the roof or in the grounds of large houses, were built for them. Such meals are also called a "sugar collation". Social meanings Banquets feature luxury foods, often including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quince Cheese
Quince cheese (also known as quince paste) is a sweet, thick jelly made of the pulp of the quince fruit. It is a common confection in several countries. Traditionally from Mediterranean. In Iberian Peninsula, it is called ''ate'' or ''dulce de membrillo'' in Spanish, ''marmelada'' in Portuguese, ''marmelo'' in Galician and ''codonyat'' in Catalan, where it is a firm, sticky, sweet reddish hard paste made of the quince (''Cydonia oblonga'') fruit. It is also very popular in Hungary (as ''birsalmasajt''), Brazil (as ''marmelada''), France (as ''pâte de coing'' in French and ''codonhat'' in Occitan), Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile (as ''dulce de membrillo''), Italy (as ''cotognata''), Croatia (as "Kotonjata"), Serbia (as ''kitnikez''), Peru (as ''machacado de membrillo''), Israel (as ''ממבריו'' ), Turkey (as ''ayva peltesi'') and Romania (as ''marmeladă de gutui''). History The recipe is probably of ancient origin; the Roman cookbook of Apicius, a colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marmalade
Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water. The well-known version is made from bitter orange. It is also made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins, sweet oranges, bergamots, and other citrus fruits, or a combination. Citrus is the most typical choice of fruit for marmalade, though historically the term has often been used for non-citrus preserves.Maguelonne-Samat, (Anthea Bell, tr.) ''A History of Food'' 2nd ed. 2009, p. 507 The preferred citrus fruit for marmalade production is the Spanish Seville or bitter orange, ''Citrus aurantium'' var. ''aurantium'', prized for its high pectin content, which sets readily to the thick consistency expected of marmalade. The peel imparts a bitter taste. The word "marmalade" is borrowed from the Portuguese , from ' quince'. Unlike jam, a large quantity of water is added to the fruit in a marmalade, the extra liquid being set by the high pectin content of the fruit. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quince
The quince (; ''Cydonia oblonga'') is the sole member of the genus ''Cydonia'' in the Malinae subtribe (which also contains apples and pears, among other fruits) of the Rosaceae family (biology), family. It is a deciduous tree that bears hard, aromatic bright golden-yellow pome fruit, similar in appearance to a pear. Ripe quince fruits are hard, tart, and astringent. They are seldom eaten raw, but are processed into marmalade, jam, paste (known as quince cheese) or alcoholic beverages. The quince tree is also grown as an ornamental plant for its attractive pale pink blossoms and other ornamental qualities. Description The tree grows high and wide. The fruit is long and across. The immature fruit is green with dense grey-white fine hair, most of which rubs off before maturity in late autumn when the fruit changes colour to yellow with hard, strongly perfumed flesh. The leaf, leaves are alternately arranged, simple, long, with an entire margin and densely pubescent with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sweetmeats
Confectionery is the Art (skill), art of making confections, which are food items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates. Exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confectionery is divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories: bakers' confections and sugar confections. The occupation of confectioner encompasses the categories of cooking performed by both the French ''Pâtissier, patissier'' (pastry chef) and the ''confiseur'' (sugar worker). Bakers' confectionery, also called flour confections, includes principally sweet pastries, cakes, and similar Baking, baked goods. Baker's confectionery excludes everyday Bread, breads, and thus is a subset of products produced by a baker. Sugar confectionery includes candies (also called ''sweets'', short for ''sweetmeats'', in many English-speaking countries), candied nuts, chocolates, chewing gum, bubble gum, pastillage, and other confections that are made primarily of sugar. In some cases, chocolate conf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds. The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sugar Mill
A sugar cane mill is a factory that processes sugar cane to produce raw or white sugar. The term is also used to refer to the equipment that crushes the sticks of sugar cane to extract the juice. Processing There are a number of steps in producing raw sugar from cane: # Cane receiving and unloading (receive the cane at the factory and unload it from the transport vehicles) # Cane preparation (cutting and shredding cane to prepare it for juice extraction) # Juice extraction (two technologies are in common use; milling or diffusion) # Juice clarification (remove suspended solids from the juice, typically mud, waxes, fibres) # Juice evaporation (to concentrate the juice to a thick syrup of about 65° brix) # Syrup clarification (remove suspended solids from the syrup, typically colloid size of mud, waxes, fibres, etc.) # Crystallisation # Centrifugation (Separation of the sugar crystals from the mother liquor, done by centrifugal machines) # Sugar drying # Packaging and delivery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa that had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders,Thornton, p. 112. while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; Europeans gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade (which was prior to the widespread availability of quini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago. The subregion includes all the islands in the Antilles, plus The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term Caribbean, although the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland nations which have Caribbean coastlines, such as Belize, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island nations of Barbados, Bermuda, and Trinidad and Tobago, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related. Origin and use of the term In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to record his arri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
São Tomé
São Tomé is the capital and largest city of the Central African island country of São Tomé and Príncipe. Its name is Portuguese for " Saint Thomas". Founded in the 15th century, it is one of Africa's oldest colonial cities. History Álvaro Caminha founded the colony of São Tomé in 1493. The Portuguese came to São Tomé in search of land to grow sugarcane. The island was uninhabited before the arrival of the Portuguese sometime around 1470. São Tomé, situated about north of the equator, had a climate wet enough to grow sugarcane in wild abundance. 2,000 Jewish children, eight years old and under, were taken from the Iberian peninsula for work on the sugar plantations. The nearby African Kingdom of Kongo eventually became a source of slave labor as well. The island of São Tomé was the main center of sugar production in the sixteenth century; it was overtaken by Brazil by 1600. São Tomé is centred on a sixteenth-century cathedral, that was largely rebuilt in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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